Extra Point

by Jack Tenney, Publisher

July 2002

Buzzwords

I don't know what my problem is, but I just can't handle "sweet." I suppose it is elegant in the scientific sense; its use can mean so many other words. Perhaps I'm just an uptight businessman who prefers archaic formal language to whatever the current accepted expressions are.

After all, never before have so many words been publicly spoken. It's, how you say 24/7, is it not? There're radio talk shows; television talk shows; public forums (fora?); C-Span One and Two; 'round-the-clock weather, news, sports, history, wrestling, cartoons; and I'm not even going to talk about music channels. With so many words being (what else?) bandied (and where else?) about, having a few choice words that mean lots of different things but at the same time mean both what the speaker is saying and the hearer is understanding in each specific use, is really a tribute to the culture of humankind.

Maybe.

On the other hand, if the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants decided to pinch off criticism of their audit work by substituting the word "sweet" for the scope and conclusion paragraph in audit opinions, more third parties (you, I, credit raters, analysts and such) would spend more time reading the footnotes.